Most powerful House Committee…Taxation.

0:00 Speaker 1 What is today is Congressman Jason Smith and runs the most powerful committee in Congress, the most powerful committee in Congress, Ways and Means Run. You know, he’ll tell us about what it does, taxes and everything else. And he’s from the great state of Missouri. Congressman. Welcome to w ABC.

0:21 Speaker 2 Thanks for having me, John. It’s a it’s a pleasure to be up here with you.

0:25 Speaker 1 Well, there’s so many things happening in Congress. Missouri is a great state. I used to go to Kansas City all the time with my friend Nelson. We ran Capital Airlines out of Smyrna, Tennessee, Nashville, so we were just not too far away. Uh, there’s so many problems going on in the world. Let’s start. What do you what

0:52 keeps you up at three o’clock in the morning.

0:55 Speaker 2 I’ll tell you the policy is that this administration continues to try to forward. If you just look at tax policy. Of course, all tax policy originates from the House Ways and Means Committee. No tax increase or tax decrease can happen unless it comes to our committee, and that’s by the Constitution. I can tell you a few months back,

1:16 setting before President Biden, State of the Union address, and he just kept going one after another tax increase, in fact, four point seven trillion dollars in tax increases he proposed. And I sat there and I thought, you know what, it’s not going to happen. It’s not going to happen under Speaker McCarthy in the House Republicans leadership, and that

1:35 is the last recipe that we could possibly use in this current economy. We’ve been doing these filled hearings throughout the country, whether it was in West Virginia or Oklahoma or Georgia. Tomorrow we’re having one here in Staten Island.

1:52 What we have learned from people is that they’re barely making it. They’re barely getting by in this current economy with the price of inflation. That inflation’s gone up over I mean, it’s gone up fourteen point nine percent since Joe Biden’s taken the oath of office, and that has cost in every American two of their month salary.

2:11 Speaker 1 Joe Biden President Biden to respect said that he’s going to help the poor in the middle class, and the people that it costs the most to the people that are suffering is the poor in the middle class. And as I said, he when he hurt the price of oil, and oil went to one hundred and twenty dollars a

2:32 barrel and caused all the food inflation. A trillion dollars worth of wealth moved from North America to where Russia and Theopic nations and made the American the poor poorer, and it hurt the middle class.

2:50 Speaker 2 I’ll tell you the district that I represent in Southeast Missouri is the ninth poorest congressional district out of four hundred and thirty five. My family is a working class family. My dad was an auto mechanic and a minister, and my mom worked in a factory. That those individuals are the ones that’s struggling the absolute most because it’s costing

3:11 more to put food on their table, clothes on their backs, some gasoline in their cars. And it’s clearly because of the policies that was implemented in his first one hundred days, his first hundred days, the executive orders and the war on US energy that that led to inflation plus inflation was one point four percent in his first month in office.

3:33 Then he did these executive orders, changed the policies, spent two trillion dollars in the American rescue plan that was supposed to be to battle COVID, but less than nine percent was actually healthcare spending. The rest went to pay people not to work and to reward political friends and allies and donors. It’s maddening. But what did the American

3:55 people get? They got higher prices.

3:58 Speaker 1 They got poorer I mean, that’s what they got. I mean, the price of food is higher than ever, and the price of gasoline is higher than ever. I mean, it seems like every time gasoline tries to come down. I know, about six weeks ago, he tried to come down to sixty five dollars a barrel. And what did the sorties do?

4:19 They cut production because Russia and the Opic nations, guess what, they want a hundred dollars oil. But they’re not getting punished with one hundred dollars oil, you know, whine because the pakistanis the India all the other are buying oil from Russia at a discount. So they don’t care what the price of oil is because they don’t pay that price.

4:43 But the American people, they’re getting hurt.

4:46 Speaker 2 They’re getting hurt. But we were talking about the cost of inflation, the cost of price of goods, going up. But because of inflation, we’ve now seen interest rates increase eleven times in just over a year year at five point two five percent.

5:01 Speaker 1 So that’s cost selling the country.

5:03 Speaker 2 It’s costing everyone more because right now people are having to put on their credit cards things that they can’t pay, and now the interest rates are going higher, so they’re just their quality of life is decreasing.

5:15 Speaker 1 Congress spend what they did with the interest rates going up and went up five points in twelve months. It wiped out the real estate industry. It hurt. There’s no construction going on, less and less and less. And would you give up your mortgage at three percent interest to get a new mortgage at a different house for seven percent?

5:35 Speaker 2 Absolutely not, It’s not going to happen.

5:37 Speaker 1 And then on top of that, the value of the bonds in the banks went down. The value of the real estate and the banks went down. So the banks are in trouble. And since the banks are in trouble, you know, the next shooter hasn’t fallen yet. The banks are not lending to anybody. So Middle America where you’re from,

5:56 guess what businesses the farms they want they need money from the banks. Well, they’re not going to be able to give it out.

6:04 Speaker 2 And that’s going to affect our strategic supply chains. We have to make sure as a nation that we are secured when it comes to our food supply, our energy supply, and our healthcare. And if it’s making harder for those farmers in Middle America to grow their crops, we’re going to have a shortage in other aspects. When it means

6:21 food supply, we should not have to worry about our food supply from other countries. It should be within our own boundaries.

6:27 Speaker 1 Here, North America has one hundred years worth of oil. Why are we begging for oil to any other station other nations.

6:35 Speaker 2 It’s not common sense. We should we have more oil here. We don’t need it anywhere else. We have natural gas, we have more coal. There’s more coal in this country than Saudi Arabia has oil, but we’re selling all of it to China.

6:50 Speaker 1 We got one hundred years with of oil in Alaska, we’re not using it now. One other thing fetanol in Vietnam, Korea and Afghanistan. We lost one hundred and seven thousand Americans. We lost more Americans in the last twelve months to drugs and fetanol than all of those wars, and nobody’s doing anything about it.

7:16 Speaker 2 Fent Naw is scary. I actually led a delegation to Mexico and I talked with the President of Mexico directly about the Finnaw issue. And I’ll tell you the Finnaw crisis in our country. Every American’s affected, Yeah, don’t. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone that doesn’t know someone who has died, whether it’s a friend or relatives friend

7:39 that has done it. And it’s it’s because of what’s coming from China. Finnaw is coming from China through Mexico, and it’s poisoning Americans.

7:48 Speaker 1 Absolutely correct. Last issue, last issue, eighty seven thousand IRS workers and none, no, no ancients at all for the oh three hundred agents for the borders. Don’t you think it should be a better balanced equation.

8:05 Speaker 2 I think we should definitely not have the eighty seven thousand IRS agents. You’re talking about doubling the size of the IRS, and for what purpose? To keep more command and control over your lives? To watch every I in every T, every ib and dotted, every tbing crossed. They’re gonna be looking underneath your couch cushions, looking to make

8:27 sure if you have a couple pennies there or not. And in this proposal that the IRS has right now that any six hundred dollars inflow or outflow of your pay power VENMO, you’re now gonna have to have a W two form. That’s crazy. It’s just so the IRS will know more of your information to be able to

8:44 track everything that you’re doing.

8:46 Speaker 1 You know who they want. The IRS wants every waiter, every cab driver that gets a cash tip. That’s who they want because the bigionnaires. I mean, if there’s only a thousand billionaires in the country, what are you gonna do with a thousand billionaires, a thousand IRS agents, what do you do with the other eighty six thousand. Well, Congressmen,

9:07 fight hard for our country because it’s going to be the end of our country if we don’t put our country back in the right direction. And twenty twenty six is the two hundred and fiftieth year I believe of our country. Let’s make sure we do the right thing by twenty twenty six.

9:24 Speaker 2 Thank you, John, thank you for what you’re doing. Thanks for having me.

9:26 Speaker 1 Thank you Congressman